Metadata To Be “Taken Seriously” At IBC – But Still No Universal Standard For The Whole Video Content Lifecycle

Philip Hunter, writing for Broadcast Engineering yesterday, discusses how metadata is likely to be more significant at the forthcoming IBC (International Broadcasting Convention) in the Netherlands in September. He notes that the majority of metadata activity is associated with Media Asset Management (or Video DAM as some of our readers would describe it).

As the article describes, there is still no single standard that encompasses the whole video content lifecycle. Also covered are some competing video metadata standards such as MXF, MPEG-7 and the relationship with time based metadata (tagging sections of footage to enable it to be isolated from the rest of the essence).

“A tour around the show floor and attendance at conference sessions would lead to the same conclusion — that there are plenty of metadata products out there and some important standards knocking about, but nothing that bridges the whole content lifecycle from production through contribution, to final search, discovery and consumption. There is still no universal standard, which is not surprising in the sense that metadata has such different requirements at say the production stage than during final distribution. A standard covering all the bases would be too heavy and unwieldy to implement.” [Read More]